Food on Friday (revisited)

Since I haven't really followed through with my great idea to do Food on Friday posts, and I only ever did two more after that (here and here), and since there is nothing else going on today, I hereby reinstate the Food on Friday tradition, and will do my best to keep it up this time!!!

Here is the recipe for that soup I made recently! If you wanted to make it vegetarian, you could probably swap the chicken stock for vegetable stock, and add large chunks of mushrooms instead of the sausage...

(slightly adapted from this cookbook which I just bought (the author is Owlhaven, link to the right under "food")- it has a ton of great looking recipes I want to try!)

Italian Sausage Soup

1 Tbs olive oil
1 lb precooked Italian sausage* (I got the hot kind), sliced into round pieces
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp red pepper flakes
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
4 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 15oz can of chickpeas, drained
2 cups chopped spinach
4 slices bacon leftover from breakfast on the weekend

1. Heat the olive oil in a big pot/dutch oven
2. Throw in the sausage, onion, carrot, garlic, and red pepper, and saute until the onion is translucent
3. Add broth and water, and bring to a boil. Add potatoes, chickpeas, and spinach. Turn heat down to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and carrots are soft, 20-25 minutes. (You definitely want the carrots to be soft, but the potatoes should be tender enough but not mushy so you have mashed potatoes in your soup!)
4. Chop or break the bacon into small pieces and sprinkle over the top of the soup after it is in the bowls.

*: I guess technically you woudln't have to precook the sausage- you could cut it into rounds, and saute/cook it first before throwing in the vegetables, etc.

PS. This makes quite a bit of soup- I'd say 5-6 or so healthy servings. It warms up nicely in microwave as a lunch for subsequent days, but if you are not into leftovers and don't have many mouths to feed, I'd say half all the ingredients...